Which travels faster, light or sound?

• A. Light
• B. Sound
• C. Both
• D. Neither

Answer: (A)

Light travels faster. Light moves as electromagnetic waves and can travel through empty space, so it doesn’t need matter to move. Sound, on the other hand, is a vibration that travels by moving particles in a medium like air, water, or wood. Those particle interactions slow sound down a lot compared to light. In air, light goes about 300,000 kilometers each second, while sound goes only about 343 meters each second. That big gap explains why you often see lightning before you hear thunder. Even in other materials, light stays much faster than sound, though it slows down compared to in a vacuum, while sound remains limited by the medium it travels through.